Garden path, shrubs and brick tower
England,  Flowers,  Lens-Artists

Sissinghurst, an English country garden

August 12, 2024 / 72 Comments

It is something more than merely interesting. It is great fun and endlessly amusing as an experiment, capable of perennial improvement, as you take away the things that don’t fit in, or that don’t satisfy you, and replace them by something you like better.

Vita Sackville-West

What makes an English country garden? Is it the choice of plants? The generously filled herbaceous borders? Perhaps a wall, a gravel or brick path, and a statue or two?

Sissinghurst in Kent is famous as the epitome of the English garden, with its series of ‘garden rooms’, each filled with different planting schemes and unique designs. This garden is a result of the creative tension between Harold Nicolson’s formal design and the exuberant planting of his wife, author Vita Sackville-West.

Garden wall with border and shrubs
Sissinghurst

We visited Sissinghurst on a hot day a few summers ago. I want to share that visit now in response to Ann-Christine’s Lens Artists challenge this week, What’s in a Garden?

But although the focus of the challenge is on gardens, I suggest we start with the ‘castle’ to set this garden in its context.

Sissinghurst Castle, a brief history

Despite the name, Sissinghurst is more of a manor house than a castle. The original manor house was built around the end of the 13th / early 14th centuries. Nothing remains of that house apart from some sections of its moat. But in the 16th century a new Renaissance courtyard home was built here by the Baker family, with a brick gatehouse and comfortable family accommodation.

Old house with tall chimneys
The manor house

The house was leased to the government during the Seven Years War (1756-63) to be used as a prison camp for 3,000 captured French sailors. It is to them that we owe the ‘castle’ element of the estate’s name. They wrote home to their families, often referring to Sissinghurst as Chateau de Sissinghurst, and the name stuck. Unfortunately, they also destroyed much of the house.

What survived was restored by later owners, the Mann Cornwallis family (their initials can be seen on the weather vanes which top the towers). This included the Renaissance gatehouse, stable block and several farm cottages.

Harold and Vita

But Sissinghurst owes its present-day fame to the couple who bought it in 1930, Vita Sackville-West and her husband Harold Nicolson. They fell in love with the estate and devoted much of the rest of their lives to creating a home here, restoring some of the buildings and adapting them for their needs, but most significantly, creating the garden that would make Sissinghurst famous.

It was Harold who designed the series of separate ‘rooms’. But it is Vita whose influence is most strongly felt in the planting of these. She felt that plants should not be constrained but instead be allowed to tumble over paths in a more romantic style.

Garden path with full borders either side
In the White Garden

Unusually Harold and Vita chose to make their home in several of the buildings that dot the property. They slept in the South Cottage, where Vita also had a flower room and Harold his book room (where he wrote). Their two sons had bedrooms in the Priest’s House, which also held the kitchen. Vita wrote in the tower, and the library was (and still is) in the former stable block opposite the tower. I found it hard to imagine living like this, until I realised that the garden is also part of the ‘house’ and walking through it from room to room would have been an almost hourly pleasure for the family.

Old fashioned room with shelves of books around the walls
The library

When the National Trust took over the property in 1967, five years after Vita’s death, they initially simply tidied up the garden. More recently they have carried out research into Vita and Harold’s original designs and vision for the gardens and are gradually restoring them to recapture these.

Exploring the gardens

I should start by acknowledging that the gardens weren’t at their best when we visited in late summer. The dry hot weather had hit some of the plants quite hard, but there was still plenty to enjoy.

Purple dahlia
Small mauve flowers with a white butterfly
Orange lilies
Dramatic pink flower
Yellow flower with a bee

The White Garden

This is probably the most famous part of Sissinghurst and the ‘room’ I enjoyed the most. Vita determined that only the colours of white, green, grey and silver were to be allowed to grow in this garden.

White flowers and shrubs with house beyond
The house from the White Garden

Here Vita demonstrated how, when colour is restricted, you can create interest and drama with different shapes, textures and form.

Garden with old stone column
Seedhead with bee
Dry seed head
Small white flowers
Backlit white flowers
White cosmos flowers with a bee
White flowers and hoverfly

I visited Sissinghurst in August 2018

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